Thursday, 29 August 2013

As mentioned in my last post I have finished my project that I had great fun doing when Me & Anne did a workshop with Hels Sheridan last week at the MDF MAN in Mansfield. As you have probably already gathered from the title it is a pocket watch and its huge!

When me and Anne booked on this workshop we were given a choice of a small 5 drawer chest or a pocket watch project. As we had both done something along the lines of a chest before, we both opted for the pocket watch expecting something about 6-8" round. As we walked through the door of Robs workshop our eyes nearly popped out of our heads as these enormous pocket watch blanks were staring at us. These monsters are over 18" x 14" and have the wow factor before you even start playing with them.

I have to make a confession that Rob did help us all out, and put the lovely graphic 45 paper onto the cog frontage in advance to save us labouring away for hours with sandpaper, and the main body & back had been primed with white Gesso but the rest is all my own work!

The first step was to add some texture around the edges with texture paste, I used a few different stencils and masks from the huge selection Hels had brought along. Crackle,Script and clocks were my choice and a sunburst type pattern that I used on the top.

Time for a brew whilst this dried, then I used weathered wood, bundled sage, Victorian velvet and frayed burlap. over the texture.

The papered cog centrepiece was sanded back to get rid of all the nasty bits from the cutting, and I then gave it a distress of frayed burlap to age it a little. The numbers were painted, with black acrylic and after little bit of a struggle by a few of us to do this neatly with a small brush, Hels came up with an easier solution of using one of the small fine nib applicators you use with alcohol inks. The nib was much firmer, and the paint did not stray quite so much. One or two other ladies used a black sharpie pen for this process with much success.

I went around the outside of the watch with black acrylic using a piece of cut n dry but swopped over to a paint brush for the inside of the handle as I found it easier. The edge of the cog section was given the same treatment to make it pop.
Hels gave us an introduction to using Treasure Gold on loads of different ways, and again we had lots of colours to choose from to highlight the texture paste.

The back of the clocks have been cleverly designed in that they still have a hole in the centre and a small recess on one side for a clock movement so can be used independently as a clock on their own.

I used a crackle stencil and weathered wood distress ink to get a lovely crackle background. The white gesso, stood out a bit too much for me so I toned it down with old paper distress ink. This made it much more in keeping with the rest of it.

The clock movement fits onto the front cog section and this actually screws onto the centre securely. The back was left off as I wanted to put some more bits and bobs into the aperture between the 3 pieces.

James worked very hard most of the morning chomping flowers & butterflies for everyone so we could decorate our pieces. I scrunched mine up a bit and added a couple of metal flower centres I had with me. I added one or two metal leaves for interest. The butterfly of course was just asking for the pen nib body.

I went to a car boot recently (no change there then!) and found a man who had an old biscuit tin of old clock and watch parts. I put these to good use as workings inside, layering them up. The spring is not even glued into the space at the bottom, it is just holding there on its own.

I added a little shelf at the bottom (half a large button) and put a little bottle of watch parts my friend Anne had given me a while ago onto it with a small cog.Anne also gave me the little bottle top and I dropped a small owl charm into it and some UTEE. This fitted perfectly int one of the holes and a cog fitted just over the other hole in

Me Hels & Anne enjoying a well deserved brew!

between the cogs. A couple of adage tickets completed the centre. The chain was secured at one end behind the flower with a small screw eye and wrapped around the top of the handle. The other end was attached to a key and the key has been stuck down with glossy accents.

The whole project was thoroughly enjoyable, and I cant wait to do another similar project. In fact I did do a little bit of shopping whilst I was there, inspired by some lovely samples Rob had on display. Watch this space for more info.....
Thank you as always for your visit, I hope you enjoyed the pictures.
Hugs
Mo x

Tuesday, 27 August 2013

Hello Blog Friends,
Thank you for dropping in. I wanted to share a Canvas I have just completed inspired by one done by Hels Sheriden on her blog recently have a look here to see her amazing work.

I loved the way that Hels uses the patchwork paper block effect on her canvas and then coloured white flowers with the dylusions inks. If you have ever used the dylusions before you will know how strong the colours are, and how much you have left on the craft mat, so I thought instead of cutting up ready printed papers, why not use the ink left over from spritzing the flowers to colour 3 pieces of card and then cut these up to form the background.

The Canvas was my first attempt using black marble dylusions paint and very scary it was too. I had all these lovely turquoise and blue colours and then I was sort of sat there black dylusions spritzer in hand and not wanting to press the spray bottle in case there was a complete black out! but I held my breath was very brave and pressed the sprayer and ...... phew did it!

In real life it looks darker than on the photo and so I decided to add a few highlights of treasure gold brass (love this stuff) to the flowers and the edges to lift it.

The wording is part of a Lindsay Mason stamp set I have had a while now and this was stamped onto a piece of canvas sheet and torn to give the frayed edges.

Some of the flowers are hand made some are bought and a 3 of them have been made with a couple of lovely little chocolate flower moulds I found in Lakeland Ltd., when we went to Windermere for my birthday in July. It gave me a great excuse to play with my melt pot and UTEE.

I had a fantastic day out with my bestist friend Anne yesterday when we went over to visit the home of the MDF man in the middle of the historic mill in Pleasley where he has his studio. Hels was the reason we were there as she was doing a workshop helping us to make yet another fantastic creation. I will post very very soon pictures of what we got up to as it just needs a couple of tweaks to finish it, so do pop back for a nosey.

Thank you as always for your visit, and for your lovely comments.
bbfn
Hugs Mo x

Monday, 19 August 2013

Hi Everyone,
It has been very quiet on this blog for the last few weeks as me and my DH enjoyed our summer hols relaxing in Norfolk. We stayed at the Kings Arms, Blakeney which if you are ever over in that neck of the woods offers superb value for money and a huge selection of home cooked food and of course its a pub so drinks on tap! Last week I was hoping to get stuck in with a fair bit of crafting but ended up nursing a nasty cold and Mr Mojo did a runner so, between the two it left me very little energy and absolutely no inspiration to do anything. This week however I feel much better and have been working on a couple of things which I will post throughout the coming week.

The first thing I wanted to show you is my entry for the latest Indigo Blu forever 21 challenge who this month has the theme of Christmas in July check in here for details.
It made sense to use one of the lovely new stamps that I won from this challenge last month (Stag Cliffhanger) and I did two projects with it.

This first project was a 8" x 8" card using acetate and alcohol inks. The photo was a nightmare to take, between the reflection of me in the acetate and the struggle to get the detail of the glittered background it was really difficult so I do hope you can see it. (Click on the photo for a better view).

This second photo is a close up of the card and the glitter detail a shows up a bit better. The coloured wavy lines are the colours of the soft alcohol inks on the acetate surface. The stamp as some of you will already know is actually all in one with the Stag standing on the cliff sentiment under his tree. It looks lovely stamped all in one as it comes but as you can see it is so easy to mask off and stamp the two halves separately if you want to so effectively you have two stamps in one - bargain!.

The second project was to make a master stamped background with different colours of distress inks and split it down to make 8 individual cards. for this one I stamped with the same stamp as in the first project plus the new large snowflake stamp.

Here in the close up photo you can see the cards have been given a ribbon coloured with contrasting inks and a little diamante on each side finishes them off nicely.

Thank you for visiting my blog, if you like what you see do please leave a comment I love to hear from you.